The present invention relates generally to optical communications, and more particularly, to software defined joint bandwidth provisioning and cache management for mobile backhaul (MBH) video traffic optimization.
The following references are mentioned or referred to herein:    [1] O. Tipmongkolsilp, “The Evolution of Cellular Backhaul Technologies: Current Issues and Future Trends,” in IEEE Comm. Survey and Tutorial, 2011.    [2] N. Cvijetic, “OFDM for Next Generation Optical Access Networks,” in IEEE JLT, 2012.    [3] K. Kanonakis, “Dynamic Software-Defined Resource Optimization in Next-Generation Optical Access Enabled by OFDMA-Based Meta-MAC Provisioning,” in IEEE JLT, 2013.    [4] N. Golrezaei, “FemtoCaching: Wireless Video Content Delivery through Distributed Caching Helpers,” in IEEE INFOCOM, 2012.
Due to the popularity of various high-performance personal devices (e.g., smart phones, pads, tablets, etc.), mobile network operators and carriers are experiencing difficulty in meeting sharp-increasing traffic demands induced by many bandwidth-consuming applications, e.g., high-definition (HD) video streaming services (as considered in this paper), etc. In particular, the expenditure on upgrading mobile backhaul (MBH) capacity in fact accounts for a significant amount of OPEX diluting the profit (e.g. the prohibitive rental costs of E1/T1 lines).
On one hand, in the data transmission area, a number of MBH solutions have been investigated to replace the traditional E1/T1 cooper lines, including satellite-based, microwave-based, optical-based (e.g., using Passive Optical Networks (PON) as studied in this paper), etc. [1]. On the other hand, in the data storage/caching area, an alternative approach to reducing MBH traffic is to deploy distributed caches within the network. In particular, recent research efforts from both academia and industry have advocated deploying caches as close to the end users as possible (e.g., directly installing caches on base stations (BSs) as studied in [4]).
Accordingly, there is a need for an effective solution joint bandwidth provisioning in software-defined PON-based MBH and cache management on base stations for HQ video delivery and designed an effective solution.